Very often it seems as if composers in the European tradition of CM use
a pentatonic scale (all the black keys on the piano will produce one)
to invoke things Chinese.  The pentatonic chinoiserie in "The Miraculous
Mandarin" (first heard in brass as the title character walks up the stairs)
and "Das Lied von der Erde" come to mind.  (By the way, didn't Mahler
rather than Bethge put two different poems together for his "Abschied"
movement?)

When I was teaching an adult music appreciation class some time ago I
played the first movement of Debussy's "Nocturnes." At one point this
features a pentatonic melody that, to me, "sounds Chinese." One of the
students was from Taiwan and he didn't hear it as such.

Aaron J. Rabushka
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